Stewie reads about Nermal in Garfield at Large: His First Book. Nermal actually doesn't appear until the third book: Garfield Bigger Than Life.
The joke with the shows in the cold open appears to be shows whose entire run was between the original cancelation and return of Family Guy, but there were several errors:note Only counting shows' airdates on FOX, not counting when they finished on other networks, such as Greg the Bunny and Wonderfalls.
Costello premiered and ended before Family Guy ever aired.
Titus premiered two years before Family Guy ended.
FreakyLinks ended over half a year before Family Guy did and its premiere was over a year before Family Guy's original finale.
Dark Angel premiered over a year before Family Guy ended.
Undeclared premiered several months before Family Guy ended.
That '80s Show premiered several months before Family Guy ended.
The Lone Gunmen premiered a little under a year before Family Guy ended and ended over half a year before Family Guy did.
Action and Get Real premiered before Family Guy even began its second season, and ended before the latter's second season did.
Normal, Ohio and The $treet's runs were before Family Guy's third season even began.
Pasadena and The Ticknote The live action version from primetime, not the animated series on Fox Kids's runs was during Family Guy's third season.
Harsh Realm's run was during Family Guy's second season.
Un-Canceled: This was the first episode aired after the second time the series was cancelled.
What Could Have Been: Mel Gibson was asked to voice himself in the episode, but declined. He later regretted doing so upon seeing the episode.
According to the DVD Commentary, At the end of the third season's production (circa. 2001), FOX ordered five scripts to be produced in case they wanted to do more episodes (this episode being one of them). Of course, the show got cancelled until it got Un-Cancelled and they used the script for the premiere.
